Tag: writing

Think back to the last marketing email you received – can you remember what caught your attention first?

Understanding how eye tracking works can help you to improve the content and overall effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.Companies can spend thousands of pounds investigating and tracking users eye movements to record what they’re looking at when opening emails. Having the ability to understand where recipients are initially drawn to can determine how to construct your email and where certain components should be placed.

Unfortunately, not every business has the budget for this type of research or software. With this in mind, and to help users of our own email marketing software, we’ve pulled together some key points to gain insight into the eye movements of recipients and how to make use of this information when building your email marketing campaigns.

Eye Scanning Patterns

The ‘F’ Pattern

There have been multiple experiments surrounding this pattern where users sweep from left-to-right a couple of times and then downwards in an ‘F’ shape. This is linked to the natural reading flow of our language being in a left-to-right direction.

From this we have learnt that the left-hand side of an email is actively looked at more than the right-hand side, so the most important pieces of information should be placed on the left.

The ‘Z’ Pattern

There is also a ‘Z’ pattern. This is similar to the ‘F’ pattern, however, the route users take to look at information is in the shape of a ‘Z’ instead. This can be implemented if you are wanting to have a slightly more adventurous layout.

This pattern shows the eye scans information left-to-right, down diagonally and then left-to-right again. Again, the most important pieces of information should be placed on the left.

Tips for Your Email Layout

Be Precise and to The Point

Readers scan emails quickly to find information that is relevant or useful to them. Emails with long wordy paragraphs and big blocks of text can cause readers to become distracted, causing them to skip over the text and not digest the information being provided. This can have an impact on the number of clicks generated from your email campaign.

It’s natural to want to get as much information to your readers as possible, but less draws the eye. Use bold titles, bullet points and call-to-actions that stand out for those scanning your emails. Give them just enough information to encourage them to click through to your website.

Guide Your Readers

Using an inverted pyramid or funnel shape to lay out certain items can subliminally guide the reader’s eyes to follow the information downward. This can be used to guide them to a specific call to action, which can encourage click throughs.

Place Important Information Above The Fold

Most marketers are aware of ‘the fold’ which was originally used to describe the area of the newspaper on display when folded. With email, it’s the section visible when a recipient first opens an email. The information above the fold should catch the reader’s attention, generate interest and encourage them to scroll down and read the rest of the content.

Draw Attention Through Images

In the world of photography, it’s well known that when looking at a picture of a person we can’t help but follow the direction that person is looking in. For example, by using an image of a someone who’s looking directly at an image of a product, a piece of text or call to action causes your reader to also look in that direction. This is a clever way of drawing your reader’s attention to the information you want to get across.

Use Numerals Instead of Text

There’s evidence that suggests that one of the best ways to grab the eye of a reader is to use numerals, along with bullet points and short paragraphs. The shape of digits varies quite heavily from alphabetic letters, so they catch the eye of the reader. Numbers are also associated with facts and statistics which some readers love!

Use Bold Call to Actions

Readers are drawn to bold call-to-actions as they are purposely placed to be eye catching. The use of contrasting colours and short striking words can grab the reader’s attention over all other text and images within an email to instruct them to follow the required action.

When creating a new email marketing design, we appreciate that the process isn’t always as straightforward as it may seem.

If you are looking at how you can design a winning email, then read on for our top ten tips on email marketing design.

1. What does the reader want to know?

Email marketing design will always depend on your objectives for sending the email. It could be you want to communicate news items, promotional offers or new products. Whatever it is you want to talk about, ensure the content is relevant to the target audience, and the key piece of information or ‘take away’, is the most prominent item within the email.

2.The ‘Marmite’ of email marketing design

Unfortunately, design is subjective, thus meaning there is no clear right or wrong answer. One person may love it and another may hate it. Also, personal preference will only get you so far. The most important thing for you to ask yourself is ‘is this right for the customer?’ If you ask yourself this question repeatedly, then your design cannot fail.

3. Build around a table

One of the most proven and most reliable ways to build a new email is through using tables. Not only will your end results look better, but some email clients including Outlook and Gmail will not render modern styling such as margining, padding and floating.

4. Make it clear

Keeping your email marketing design short, the content concise and the call to actions clear, will not only make your email more compelling for the reader, but will also make it easier for them to a). Understand what it is you are telling them, and b). What it is you want them to do.

5. Increase the flow of traffic

Always include clickable links and call to actions within your email marketing design. This will not only give you more options when it comes to tracking the results of your emails, but will also drive additional traffic to your website – giving you another opportunity to engage with your clients and capture data. Always ensure the links work and they take the reader directly to the relevant page. The last thing you want is to provide a bad customer experience and risk a potentially healthy conversion rate.

6. Carefully select your images

Remember, you are essentially telling a story, and the best way to get your story heard is to make it as visually enticing as possible. The best way to do this is to include relevant images. Positioning your images alongside related text will ensure the readers’ eyes are drawn to the message or product you are promoting. That said, less is more, so don’t rely too heavily on images to tell your story, as around 60% of email recipients block images from displaying by default. Always include ALT Tags – a text alternative for images in these instances, so your recipient can gain an idea of what the image is. Additionally, search engine spiders use ALT tags to translate what an image represents.

7. Less is definitely more

Emails are scanned, not read. Therefore, any body of text within the email should not exceed four lines. The more text you include, the less likely it is to get read. Be sure to make all your text easier to read by using a plain font such as;

This combined with standard sizes for headings, sub headings, body text and links, will help the reader to navigate their way through the contents more efficiently when scanning.

8. Never be afraid of ‘white space’

White space is underrated. Whilst some view this as another opportunity to squeeze in one more offer or message, it does in fact, act as a natural resting point for your readers’ eyes, again helping them to navigate their way through the email more easily.

9. Don’t risk an email being unopened

With so many potential online threats coming from emails, it is important for your subscribers to instantly know the email has come from you, and only you. Otherwise, you risk them sending it to their ‘trash can’ without a second glance. Use a subject line that uses your brand tone of voice and position your logo and website link consistently across all of your emails – this will also help with brand recognition and build trust.

10. Give them a ‘get out of email free card’

Always make it easy for your subscribers to ‘unsubscribe’ should they wish to. Not only is this a legal requirement, it also makes sense. If your subscriber wishes to go, let them. You can always offer them alternative frequencies and subjects with the use of preference centre, but if they want to leave, let them.

Marketers send emails for many different reasons, but mostly their goal is to encourage their subscribers to action or to “call them to action”.

A well crafted call to action can make or break the effectiveness of any marketing email. I have highlighted 5 good examples of email marketing calls to action. Click on the images below to see how the call to action fits into the marketing email as a whole.

1) Above the Fold Call to Action

Whether you design websites or marketing emails, you will know that important content is best placed above the fold. While informing and enticing subscribers is obviously important and worthy of the prime position above the fold, so to is the call to action. This email from Firefox is a great example of giving the call to action more visibility by putting it near the top of the email.

Consumers are busy, so email marketers need to make it as easy as possible for their subscribers to click on the call to action. Don’t expect a customer to go looking for it.

2) All Roads Lead to Call to Action

If you find that your call to action would not fit above the fold, then you need to make sure that it is still easy to find. This email from Catch effectively leads the reader on a journey through the email, with an obvious destination, which is the call to action button requesting you to “Go To Wonderland”.

3) Highlighting Everything, Highlights Nothing

Many people are afraid of white space when designing an email, thinking that it makes the email look unfinished or cold. They then decide to fill the email with colour. In some cases this is fine, but there is also a danger that if you highlight everything you end up highlighting nothing.

Contrast is vital for any call to action and having a white background makes it easier to achieve a good contrast. The below example illustrates this point to great effect. Your eye is immediately drawn to the brightly coloured button.

4) Why Should I Heed Your Call to Action?

Put yourself in your customers shoes and think would I click on this call to action and is it enticing enough. Consumers respond to your marketing emails only when there is a perceived value in them doing so. In some cases the chance to see a retailers latest line of clothing is enough of a reason to click through, for other retailers a more tangible incentive needs offering to encourage customers to click on the call to action.

Whatever the value or incentive is, it needs to be clearly conveyed.

5) Short and Powerful Call to Action

Keep your calls to action short so that consumers get the message even if they just skim over the email. If it is compelling enough, subscribers will be more likely to spend some time reading the email further.

Also, you are trying to call someone to action so make sure you use a verb in your wording, doing words get things done!

Other things to consider

Text Link: Don’t rely solely on image based call to action links. A well crafted text link can look just as eye catching and has the added benefit of displaying even if images in the email are turned off.

Deliver on your promise: Customers click on a call to action because there was the promise of value. If this promised value is not delivered or not easily found once the customer is on your website, the customer will be less likely to click through in future. “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” Actually I think this is the correct idiom.

Test different calls to action: Try a different colour button, different wording or test the difference between a text or image call to action. With A/B split testing or Multivariate Testing (MVT) you can find the best performing button or variation of call to action elements.

Most businesses know they need to have a welcome email; it’s one of the most engaging emails you will send with open rates in excess of 50% and unique click through rates 105% higher than any other form of email.

But with that said I still see some very poor attempts at this first point of contact with the customer. Below are some hints and tips on how to create the perfect welcome email:

Sign-up

Ensure your newsletter sign-up form is easy to find and fill in. You should also clearly detail the incentives and benefits of signing up.

Timing

It’s important that your welcome email is sent immediately after your customer has signed up, strike while the person’s interest is at its highest. If you leave it to late, people will presume something has gone wrong and this might put doubt in their mind with regards to your brand.

Subject line

Even with engagement so high with a welcome email it is important to get the subject line right, personalise with the customer’s name and remember to give customers a reason to open, include the incentive where possible.

Content

Here are 3 recommendations for the perfect welcome email content;

Remind the customer how they signed up – make it clear how and why you got there email address.

Offer an incentive – while you’ve got the customers attention offer a discount for a repeat or first time purchase.

Gather more info – include a link to gather more specific information from the customer leading on to better segmentation and targeting in later communication.

Frequency

Instead of cramming all the above into one email, a series of welcome emails can work well.

First email – immediately after sign up thanking and welcoming the customer

Second email – 2-3 days after sign up offering an incentive

Third email – 5-7 days after sign up asking for more information

There can also be room for some cleansing at this early stage, sending an email to non openers of the first email with the incentive and the opportunity to unsubscribe would be good practice. It’s better to remove people who no longer wish to be on the database now, rather than later.

Testing

Its easy once the welcome programme is set up to just forget about it and leave it, but there’s always room for improvement. Set up a testing plan to constantly push for higher engagement rates. Test the subject line test and tweak the call to action, to make the most of this first point of contact with your customer.

As one of the email marketing consultants here at GraphicMail I would be happy to review your current welcome programmes. If you would like to talk about welcome emails further, please to get in touch.

It is a day set aside to celebrate what is normally regarded as bad etiquette, especially when used in emails.

Using ALL CAPS in your emails is widely regarded to mean you are SHOUTING at the recipient. Something which contributed to Vicki Walker of Auckland, New Zealand getting fired.

Vicki would often write her emails and include whole sections in all caps, highlighted in BOLD and Red. In a tribunal Vicki’s employers argued the constant use of all caps in her emails spread “disharmony in her workplace” and justified her dismissal.

So what can Email Marketers learn from the case of Vicki Walker?

Although all caps is more acceptable in creative design, email marketers still need to exercise some restraint. Using all caps can work well in highlighting your key message, but if overused it will make your whole email unreadable. Below is an example of all caps making an email hard to read:

Another retailer that loves the caps lock key is Sugarhill Boutique. They love all caps so much, that there isn’t one single lowercase letter in their entire email.

Even their subject line was made up entirely of capital letters, which is quite ironic as they were attempting to whisper to their subscribers to let them know about a ‘secret’ summer sale. Instead they in affect yelled at them saying “PSST SUMMER SALE ON TODAY”.

Having said all that, there email is a lovely looking thing, so I will forgive their excessive use of all caps.

In summary, it is a good idea to use your caps lock key wisely. After all if you highlight everything you end up highlighting nothing.

Well, I’m going to go read some @DRUNKHULK tweets now and revel in some ALL CAPS goodness.